TeleFinder Chat Log

Text of TeleFinder Chat from Tuesday, February 17, 1998 11 AM PST.

In attendance:

From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker,

Sysops: Daniel O'Leary, Jim Leary, Bill Gram-Reefer, mikael fredriksson, Bob Nunn, Ken Sutherland

Daniel O'Leary: <<joined the chat>>

Jim Leary: <<joined the chat>>

Rusty Tucker: <<joined the chat>>

Jim Leary: Hey Dan...I guess the crowd is on their way in. You haven't done anything about that program have you?

Daniel O'Leary: I have looked at logging via forms.

Jim Leary: I mean the Java thing

Daniel O'Leary: I have not, yet as I have been really busy trying to fix some broken processes at work.

Bill Gram-Reefer: <<joined the chat>>

Rusty Tucker: Good morning!

Bill Gram-Reefer: yabba dabba do

Daniel O'Leary: Hi Rusty.. You B&W doc guy you...

Rusty Tucker: :)

Jim Leary: Don't get it yet. Give me the rest of the week to look into it. I too am busy, so just wait on that OK

Daniel O'Leary: Grin.

Daniel O'Leary: Ok.

Rusty Tucker: A new server/user manager/client update is in the pipe...

Daniel O'Leary: Jammin!

Daniel O'Leary: what does it do?

Bill Gram-Reefer: ssssmokin

Rusty Tucker: The new release will support chat rooms in any part of the BBS

Daniel O'Leary: Yippie!

Daniel O'Leary: That will make my DT look cleaner.

Jim Leary: In regard to the logging. Thanks for any effort. When you have the time, I appreciate looking into it. You have my e-mail. Let me know if/when you have something regarding logging the Users and downloads on the web page

Rusty Tucker: + instead of 32 channels, you'll get 32000 channels

Daniel O'Leary: Wow!

Jim Leary: I also asked Jon about it. I figure I've got two of the best on it and am confident something will break

Bill Gram-Reefer: Internet chat...caching$$$

Daniel O'Leary: Rusty, Can we add tighter integration with UM for access?

Rusty Tucker: In the access groups you add a record to define a range of channels users can use

Bob Nunn: <<joined the chat>>

Daniel O'Leary: IE honor the other priviledge with support for conditional display of Post buttons, and http transfers...???

Bob Nunn: Sorry guys will only be here in spirit today. Have to attend a meeting. Late now.

Rusty Tucker: Once the range of channels is defined, sysops and users can create chat rooms anywhere they want.

Rusty Tucker: even in your own mail folder!

Daniel O'Leary: And back it up with conditional exec of the routines to actually do the stuff.

Daniel O'Leary: so that it can't be spoofed.

Rusty Tucker: The "Chat" file is just tab delimited text chat<tab>channel#<tab>icon id<return>

Daniel O'Leary: Easy enough!!!

Rusty Tucker: the icon ID is the Icon # TF will display for the file online.

Daniel O'Leary: does that mean that you can have more than one entry point in the BBS for the same chat room?3

Rusty Tucker: absolutely,

Daniel O'Leary: Cool.

Rick Palmer: <<joined the chat>>

Bill Gram-Reefer: got a meeting, still here go at it

Rusty Tucker: For example, user's can keep and create their own chat files and share them with friends

Rusty Tucker: as long as the Channel #s are within their allowable range

Daniel O'Leary: Can you help us with interfacing to Chat functions? I still don't think I have enough to figure out how to write my routines to interface to chat.

Rick Palmer: just got here so you might have gone over it...do they need to be logged into TF to use the chat files?

Rusty Tucker: Yes, they are for TF User only

Rusty Tucker: not web based.

Daniel O'Leary: Am trying to prototype a module to write a TF to web translator...

Rusty Tucker: did you talk to Aaron Pekman at MacNexus?

Jim Leary: Would that help log USER NAMES Dan?

Daniel O'Leary: No, as I did not know who the author was...

Rusty Tucker: He did one for Frontier. It used page refresh, but worked.

Rick Palmer: I hate page refreshed chats

Rusty Tucker: yeah

Daniel O'Leary: If I do it correctly, then that won't be required, and the system could work for inter-bbs chats too.,

Daniel O'Leary: You'd need to reserve channels for this purpose, and establish a routing mechanism, but I think that is already feasible with what I already have.

Rick Palmer: how can I help Dan

Rick Palmer: Dan

Rusty Tucker: You'll need a java client and a tcp server to talk to Chat Server.

Daniel O'Leary: Write.

Daniel O'Leary: Right.

Daniel O'Leary: Have source to the TCP server already.

Daniel O'Leary: Have..

Daniel O'Leary: Have a Java Client also.

Rusty Tucker: but.. ?

Daniel O'Leary: Uses Telnet but can be moved to any port.

Daniel O'Leary: I do not have the way to talk to the Chat server figured out.

Rusty Tucker: that's the easy part! :)

Daniel O'Leary: Rusty, I sent Chris this source a long time ago...

Daniel O'Leary: did he ever show it to you?

Rusty Tucker: you login, enter chat, open a channel, talk and listen, then back out when done.

Daniel O'Leary: The server source I have was from a Webmonkey Project on Wired's site.

Daniel O'Leary: The client was a no brainer too.

Daniel O'Leary: I tried to establish a link between the server and the TF chat, but I did get very far...

Daniel O'Leary: Not get...

Daniel O'Leary: Duplexing between systems could get messy if I do not figure out how to do "echo cancelling" also...

Rusty Tucker: I'm back

Rusty Tucker: what echo canceling?

Rusty Tucker: Chris also had a sample Frontier program I think. It was like a robot user.

Daniel O'Leary: To keep the msgs from one system from bouncing back and forth between systems, since they do not know about the users logged into the foreign system.

mikael fredriksson: <<joined the chat>>

Rusty Tucker: If you sent it an IM, it would bomb you with replies.

Rusty Tucker: usually nasty ones :)

Daniel O'Leary: Hehe...

Rusty Tucker: I'd ask him to look at that.

mikael fredriksson: hi

Daniel O'Leary: Hi MF.

Rusty Tucker: The other new feature in the upcoming release is larger block sizes for the background transfer protocol.

Rusty Tucker: Let me tell you , it _really_ speeds things up!

Rusty Tucker: I'm able to get over 120K cps through put on BG protocol now.

Daniel O'Leary: The other thing That has my attention is user-level versus IP-address/domain name logging of web site activities...

mikael fredriksson: A ISP here in Sweden kidnapped my domain this weekend... fun :(

Daniel O'Leary: I would think that a dir.template change could do this...

Daniel O'Leary: I think that the template would have to send a cookie to the client to maintain state, but am not sure...

Daniel O'Leary: It would have to expire rather quickly too.

Rusty Tucker: DO - plugins can handle that easily

Rusty Tucker: You can be a "post-processor" and see every request after the fact that way

Rusty Tucker: Or register as a "logger"

Daniel O'Leary: The number of bytes transfered would be added to those for the user account info.

Daniel O'Leary: this, coupled with enforcement of xfer privileges by UM would stop web based leaching.

Daniel O'Leary: and provide business users cost data they need.

Rusty Tucker: You mean time limits on the web?

Daniel O'Leary: to justify these sites.

Daniel O'Leary: I mean xfer limits on web file sections, and user time online recorded.

Daniel O'Leary: Makes the Web functions fall inline with the BBS functions...

Daniel O'Leary: and prevents circumventing one of the other.

Rusty Tucker: Time limits are an artifact of having a single modem for the BBS.

Daniel O'Leary: one, via use of the other...

Daniel O'Leary: Sometime you want a client to get info one a file without being able to download the file...

Daniel O'Leary: Also those who are trying to justify their web investment need bean-counter-level usage.

Rusty Tucker: HTTP doesn't understand the difference. A page is a page, and a page is a download.

Daniel O'Leary: Right but a REALM protected page is MORE.

Daniel O'Leary: A requirement to identify the user accessing it...

Daniel O'Leary: A requirement to document the accesses made by the user.

Rusty Tucker: They are all the same actually. It just that some pages need the name and password with them.

Daniel O'Leary: HTTP does not know the difference, but UM does.

Rusty Tucker: UM doesn't. The BBS protocol does.

Daniel O'Leary: What I am requesting is that the server honor the privileges and restrictions enforced by the BBS.

Rusty Tucker: But for HTTP you need to convert "Get Info" to a "page" since that's all you have.

Rusty Tucker: The BBS knows about "Get Info" and "Download" as separate requests.

Daniel O'Leary: The suite of servers that make up the whole thing should know this also.

Daniel O'Leary: even on the web side, for pages that required a password.

Daniel O'Leary: I realize that this is different than other HTTP servers.

Rusty Tucker: Unfortunately, we are limited by the underlying protocols in some cases.

Daniel O'Leary: They never had a BBS operational requirement.

Daniel O'Leary: But evolution beyond the basic HTTP is what sets TF apart.

Daniel O'Leary: and it still has a foot in its roots as a BBS.

Bill Gram-Reefer: he's back

Daniel O'Leary: I think the customizations could be made by SPML templates and extensions.

Rusty Tucker: For sure, but there are some points where HTTP limits what we can do.

Daniel O'Leary: without disturbing the protocols.

Jim Leary: <<left the chat>>

Jim Leary: <<joined the chat>>

Rusty Tucker: My only point is that if there is a Download limit per day. I'm going to have a tough time making a distinction between "file downloads" and "page requests"

Daniel O'Leary: AH, but if I set a variable that says "I AM A FILE SECTION" and your server evaluates it, then it is childs play.

Daniel O'Leary: Correct?

Rusty Tucker: It's all or nothing inside a realm. Once you've hit you're quota, no more pages from that realm.

Daniel O'Leary: Ok. but if I can set and evaluate based upon data in the UM database, then this can be done on the fly as needed?

Rusty Tucker: You can set that var in dir.spml, but you don't even see the file request.

Daniel O'Leary: Needs tacking on the client side too, via cookies I think.

Daniel O'Leary: tracking...

Rusty Tucker: Seems like leaching the web is a 'problem' servers try to encourage for the most part. builds up traffic and ad revenue.

Daniel O'Leary: Also consumes BW and kills off accountability on the user stats part.

Rusty Tucker: If you don't want them downloading from you, just point them to download.com or AMUG

Rick Palmer: redirect based on domain

Daniel O'Leary: AMUG or DL.com may not offer what I have on here.

Daniel O'Leary: it is unification with the control mechanism that already exists, that I am trying to obtain.

Daniel O'Leary: Your case for protocols be the limiting factor could be extended to zmodem and FTP.

Daniel O'Leary: zmodem does not care, because the control is in access to the command.

Rusty Tucker: FTP has the notion of a "session" which HTTP does not.

Daniel O'Leary: FTP uses a user login mechanism, then relies on system to restrict access...

Daniel O'Leary: HTTP does know about the target IP, and can be coerced by cookies to maintain identity of remotes??

Daniel O'Leary: thinking out loud again.

Rusty Tucker: Those are hacks on top of the protocol which may or may not work.

mikael fredriksson: <<joined the chat>>

Rusty Tucker: What do you do if the client lies about his cookies, or does not support them?

Daniel O'Leary: i realize that session is known to HTTP... but for every transmission of command/response.

Rusty Tucker: Its not really a session, there is not any linkage between various command/response transactions.

Daniel O'Leary: I have the same problem at the user login prompt now.

Daniel O'Leary: I think.

Rusty Tucker: Each transaction must be able to stand on its own.

Ken Sutherland: <<joined the chat>>

Daniel O'Leary: Hi Ken...

Rusty Tucker: That's why Chat doesn't work on the web

Ken Sutherland: HIYA ALL, SORRY IM LATE

Rusty Tucker: you need to use a Java client that can do a real session.

Ken Sutherland: sorry for caps

Daniel O'Leary: Maintain a stream...

Rusty Tucker: yes

Rusty Tucker: you'll need to do an independent login as well

Daniel O'Leary: Does SSL need those things to?

Daniel O'Leary: Somehow SSL sessions maintain state...

Rusty Tucker: I don't think so.

Daniel O'Leary: or create the illusion of doing so.

Rusty Tucker: They should check the certificates each time.

Rusty Tucker: anyway, we're way off track here today :)

Daniel O'Leary: But they must keep changing the connection in an agreed to way, correct?

Daniel O'Leary: Looks like the same problem to me.

Daniel O'Leary: grin.

Rusty Tucker: Talk to Chris to get the Frontier source for his Instant Message 'bot.

Bill Gram-Reefer: so will this be 5.6.3 for server?

Rusty Tucker: And to Aaron to get his Frontier chat room.

Daniel O'Leary: Ok...

Rusty Tucker: That will get you on the right track with Chat Server's apple events.

Daniel O'Leary: I think that will be helpful in several areas...

Rusty Tucker: 5.6.2 will have chat rooms in any area, and Fast background transfers

Daniel O'Leary: Any chance of resume or FTP additions?

Ken Sutherland: got an idea for you

Rusty Tucker: and the new "Hit Chart" plug-in

Rusty Tucker: resume for BG protocol?

Rusty Tucker: I'm trying for that.

Daniel O'Leary: Yes... You'd be amazed at how many times a Telnet session attempts ZM.

Daniel O'Leary: and it does not work.

Daniel O'Leary: since that's all they see in the menus.

Rusty Tucker: Oh -- I can't help those guys!

Rusty Tucker: You shouldn't really "telnet" to TeleFinder.

Rusty Tucker: its not much use :)

Daniel O'Leary: But it is sometimes the only way to get a TF client to them!

Bill Gram-Reefer: RT, can I ask you a ? about PPP

Rusty Tucker: The other thing I'm looking at is "helpers" for file downloads.

Daniel O'Leary: ???

Ken Sutherland: u know who this new html mail is now becoming popular, does this give you a RFC format to transfer the color elements in tf mail and conferences in a tf-tf transfer

Rusty Tucker: Maybe utilizing Internet Config to "auto-unstuff" or whatever.

Rusty Tucker: After a download is complete, TF would open the file using a pre-determined app based on the doc type.

Daniel O'Leary: What about non-mac clients?

Daniel O'Leary: or is this for the server?

Rusty Tucker: The BBS client software.

Rusty Tucker: TF User for Mac or Windows.

Daniel O'Leary: What does the IC function in windows?

Rusty Tucker: Netscape already has that feature for web xfrs.

Ken Sutherland: is there a new protocol for Microsoft's rich mail format or are they just trying to force the issue as usual, the might of the users etc.......

Rusty Tucker: In Windows, it would have to be built-in to TeleFinder.

Rusty Tucker: Ken, it's just another MIME sub-type -> HTML

Bill Gram-Reefer: Under what conditions will the PPP "you've been disconnected" message come up and NOT go away unless user presses OK. It seems that there have been several instances of disconnects during the nite and PPP reconnected and TF refreshed tcp threads without that message getting in the way. But I'm not sure of the rhyme or reason. Is it a matter of having a particular app at top and active?

Rusty Tucker: its legit and supported by Eudora too.

Rusty Tucker: I don't know, that comes from PPP itself.

Ken Sutherland: do people realize how much bigger the Pop3 file size grows, 20-30% by my calculations

Rusty Tucker: That's why I though it might be better to use FreePPP.

Ken Sutherland: that's what i call a haddock for ISP's

Daniel O'Leary: better yet build client and server for PPP right into TF... Ducking...

Rusty Tucker: ha!

Bill Gram-Reefer: someone had indicated earlier that it might be because some app was at top

Ken Sutherland: ha ha ha ha ha

Ken Sutherland: tell me when to stop

Ken Sutherland: ha ha

Rusty Tucker: I don't know about that BGR

Ken Sutherland: ha

Ken Sutherland: ha

Ken Sutherland: ha

Daniel O'Leary: Stop!

Rusty Tucker: :)

Ken Sutherland: OK

Bill Gram-Reefer: I think my recent relative success comes from having ClarisWorks or FM Pro selected

Daniel O'Leary: Would a PPP server be that large a project Rusty?

Ken Sutherland: not for Rusty 8-)

Bill Gram-Reefer: I know there was a disconnect/reconnect cause mail doesn�t work and have to recharge MS. Then I look at PPP log and yup

Daniel O'Leary: BGR you can use server bot to restart MS...

Rusty Tucker: DO - it's called Vicom Internet Gateway

Bill Gram-Reefer: explain

Daniel O'Leary: RT it is not integrated with UM ...

Bill Gram-Reefer: Yeah but isn't VIG black magic?

Rusty Tucker: THAT would be much easier than making a whole new one!

Rusty Tucker: Not their soft router

Daniel O'Leary: BGR... Server bot watches the PPP link and can start apps upon fault.

Daniel O'Leary: stops them too.

Rusty Tucker: I have the code for PPP and routing, but no market to sell it too :(

Daniel O'Leary: ARGH!!!!!!!

Rusty Tucker: it needs work of course.

Daniel O'Leary: !!!!!!

Daniel O'Leary: tell me when to stop....

Ken Sutherland: YES YOU DOOOODADOOOO

Ken Sutherland: hum that tune or smell that bull

Ken Sutherland: 8-)

Daniel O'Leary: Routing should be a part of MS, and PPP should be a part of TFS.

Daniel O'Leary: my opinion of course.

Rusty Tucker: Thanks Dan.

Rusty Tucker: I don't have enough to do already :)

Daniel O'Leary: Grin.

Rusty Tucker: It should be part of the OS, but hey.

Daniel O'Leary: This is not Unix...

Ken Sutherland: ask Chris

Daniel O'Leary: I would agrees with you too..

Daniel O'Leary: Any more features of the new server?

Rusty Tucker: nope it's just a dot release :)

Daniel O'Leary: and is there backward compatibility with the old clients?

Rusty Tucker: or dot-dot I guess

Ken Sutherland: a full rethought on the User Manager for multilayer control

Rusty Tucker: Of course DO!

Ken Sutherland: no backwardness please, tf has the ability to determine build level, send them an automessage to download the most up to date client or force download

Daniel O'Leary: Ok, just making sure...

Daniel O'Leary: That's a cool idea too Ken...

Rusty Tucker: Always Backward Compatible.

Rusty Tucker: Oh, yeah, talk about sucking up bandwidth!

Daniel O'Leary: hehe...

Ken Sutherland: be like Rhapsody, cut and run

Daniel O'Leary: but it is a self-maintaining setup.

Daniel O'Leary: worth the added baggage.

Daniel O'Leary: and only run during initial connect.

Daniel O'Leary: ... by the way, you need a new client......

Rusty Tucker: Any last Q's before I run?

Daniel O'Leary: ... by the way your settings file has been superseded b a new one....

Bill Gram-Reefer: so for now, VIG is only way? as all TF connections are really connected via VIG so when connection goes it's only the VIG connection which it restarts?

Ken Sutherland: why not a dynamic download, auto download a res update

Daniel O'Leary: Yes BGR.

Ken Sutherland: you could do the same with the settings file, auto update as well, also there is the pc client to cry over (grin)

Rusty Tucker: BGR - just try FreePPP.

Bill Gram-Reefer: ok, I'll do that first.

Rusty Tucker: I don't think it tosses up those Alerts

Daniel O'Leary: RT MS does not re-connect.

Daniel O'Leary: it just sits there.

Rusty Tucker: and the next Mail Server will do the restart thingy

Daniel O'Leary: Cool.

Ken Sutherland: a total dynamic update subroutine would be nice, keeps the setup crisp

Bill Gram-Reefer: OK guys see you Friday thanks

Rusty Tucker: DO- that's cuz I haven�t released a build based on my new OT lib

Rusty Tucker: its nothing to do with Mail Server other than that..

Daniel O'Leary: Am glad you are pushing OT fixes...

Ken Sutherland: tell me please

Rusty Tucker: tell u what?

Daniel O'Leary: Wish my other TCP server were doing that.

Daniel O'Leary: Palace, and FTP.

Rusty Tucker: ok see you all Friday!